Learning strategic communication

Strategy is a military concept to reach our goals in the most effective way. One of the preconditions of any strategy is the right understanding of the situation. Trying to draw a situation, without any artistic ambitions, has been a useful exercise for me to understand the situation. It taught me to be mindful of the most important things. To picture what other people see and what they do not see.

I came to understand what Musashi writes in his strategy manual: “the Way of the samurai is twofold: the way of the brush and of the sword. He has to have an affinity for both ways. Even if someone does not possess the natural talent, he can become a samurai by relentlessly holding on to both aspects of the Way.”

To draw on a blank piece of paper is to develop a communication strategy. What is the main issue to communicate? How to frame the issue? The core message? What to leave out? What to give more accents? How to get a top brain position.

To illustrate what I mean I share some of my old exercises. They are from my diary when I traveled for some months in Japan in the mid seventies I did not write anything. Instead I made a drawing every day. You can easily see how complex reality is. How often you are distracted by the unimportant things. Through practicing I slowly learned to assess the situation, to see what is important to be effective.